John Rawls and Robert Nozick were two American political philosophers. They both created theories that challenged the theory of Utilitarianism and focused on the right of the individual over the benefit of the masses. However, these two political philosophers had opposing theories when it came to what made a just society. John Rawls published Theory of Justice in 1971 outlining what a just society would look like under the theory of “justice of fairness”. John Nozick on the other hand, published his retort to Rawls’s Theory of Justice only three years later, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. I believe we can live in a society where wealth is distributed more evenly and where individuals have equal access to social goods. There are current functioning examples of Rawls’ theory of distributive justice throughout the modern world, mainly in the countries like Norway, Netherlands, and Germany. I believe that Rawls’s philosophy when correctly applied would make for a just and fair society. However, currently in the US the inequality of the distribution of wealth has caused a large divide between the minority that holds the most wealth and the rest of the classes. Ungoverned capitalism does not work in favor of those individuals that cannot help themselves. In the book The Moral of the Story: An Introduction to Ethics, Rawls theory of Justice as Fairness is explored in some detail. It is explained that Rawls believed that everyone should have equal access to social goods, in some way or other. The passage to which I am referencing goes on to state “without positive rights you may not be able to enjoy those negative rights, so you also have a basic right to be taken care of by society if you can’t take care of yourself. Under Rawls’s theory he suggests a thought experiment in which an individual must imagine he or she is making rules for a new society and that they will be a part of it but they do not know what place in society they will hold. Rawls explains that once under this “veil of ignorance” the individual who has been asked to make the rules will do so more fairly. Rawls calls this position the “original position” because it is from “this position that we should imagine making rules for all of society”. (p 349) The individual will want to make certain that whatever rules he or she comes up with about fair distribution of the goods of society, such as jobs, healthcare, food and shelter are more equally distributed. The passage in The Moral of the Story explains that it is essentially a form of rational self-interest, it turns into an understanding of other people’s needs. I believe it is important to note that Rawls was deeply inspired by Immanuel Kant’s idea that all of humanity should be treated as ends in themselves, never merely as means to an end. (p.349) Because Rawls believed that individuals were ends in themselves his theory challenged the premise of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism holds that the good of the many should outweigh the good of the few. A counter example to utilitarianism in reference to Rawls, Theory of Justice, was brought up in the video by Tamar Gendler, Philosophy Chair at Yale University. In the example Gendler asks the viewer to imagine a healthy man who walks